Tristan Muyumba played alongside Kylian Mbappe in the Monaco youth teams between 2013 and 2016. He now plays for Atlanta United in MLS.

I joined Monaco in 2012, one year before Kylian arrived.

I’d never met him before. But he seemed pretty straightforward. We were all kids at that time. We just wanted to have fun and play football. But we knew that we were at a prestigious club — Monaco — and that there were targets we had to hit.

Kylian liked messing around, having a laugh and telling jokes — just like the rest of us. But inevitably, from the first training sessions, you saw the guy’s quality. You saw straight away that he had technical quality and speed that were all his own.

He didn’t have a different status to the rest of us. We weren’t saying, “Oh look, here comes Kylian.” But I think that among the staff and within the club, there were people saying to themselves, “A big player has just joined the academy and we need to make sure it goes well.”

We had a common room at the academy and we’d get together there in the evenings to watch football. We watched a lot of football — Ligue 1, Ligue 2, the National (France’s third tier), foreign championships, everything. There was table football and ping pong and things like that as well. But everything revolved around football.

When it came to Kylian’s models, it was Cristiano Ronaldo morning, noon and night! He’d watch videos of him playing for Manchester United and Real Madrid — goals, shots, the way he struck the ball, dribbles. He was a real fan, in every way — when he scored goals, he’d do the Ronaldo celebration! It was pretty funny.

He liked Neymar a lot — you saw that during their first two seasons at Paris Saint-Germain, when they became very close. Robinho too. But if you had to single out one player, it was Ronaldo.

Before joining the Monaco academy, he’d gone on trial at Real Madrid and he’d met Ronaldo. They’d taken a photo together and he had it as the background on his iPad. I know that it was an unforgettable moment for him.

Kylian Mbappe posted an image of him at 14 years old with Cristiano Ronaldo, along with the caption: “My dream has come true” pic.twitter.com/cMGwnHqAKt

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He loved watching videos of Ronaldo’s dribbles, because Kylian was really good at dribbling and one-v-ones. They were things he drew inspiration from.

It’s funny, and I’ve talked about it with other team-mates from that time — the Kylian that we knew at the academy was a totally different player to the one you see on TV today. He was all about dribbling — lots of stepovers, lots of showiness.

He was able to get past his direct opponent and score goals. But he was more of a wide player. He wasn’t a No 9 like he is today with Real Madrid and France. He mainly played on the left, sometimes on the right. He had his own way of playing, but Ronaldo was a model for him and a source of inspiration.

He tended to want the ball to feet in his early years. That formed part of his development. Our coaches did lots of work on that with him — notably Frederic Barilaro, who was one of the youth coaches at Monaco. He really emphasised that to him: “You can’t always ask for the ball to feet,” he’d say. “At some point you’ll need to expand your game by adding some variety to it, whether that’s by making runs or going in behind.”

He took that on board quickly. That’s another one of his strengths — he takes things on board quickly. He realised that it was something that might hold him back.

Mbappe on the attack against Saint Etienne in 2016 (JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK / AFP via Getty Images)

There again, he drew a lot of inspiration from Cristiano Ronaldo. When you see how Ronaldo started out at Manchester, he was all about dribbling and being on the wing. But then he moved into the centre and that enabled him to have the career he’s had.

Kylian understood that in order to stand the test of time and become one of the greats, staying on the wing and doing stepovers wasn’t going to be enough. It was: “I need to score goals and I need to be decisive in the majority of my matches.”

When he went into the Under-19s, there was a run of about six games where he scored twice in every match. We knew he was a very good player, but scoring goals and being decisive like that made a difference. He’d become a different kind of player. From that moment on, things moved very, very quickly for him.

Every team we played suffered against him: Marseille, Toulouse, Pau… I remember Issa Diop, the Fulham defender, was at Toulouse at that time. Kylian was monstrous in the game against them. He was practically unstoppable.

Muyumba was captain as Monaco Under 19s won the Coupe Gambardella in 2016 (FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images)

He moved up to the reserves and then quickly to the first team. Once he started playing with the first team, we basically never saw him again.

It’s part of who he is — he had that obsession of wanting to succeed straight away. From a young age, he used to talk about becoming the best player in the world, playing for Real Madrid and winning the Ballon d’Or.

But it wasn’t arrogance, it was self-assurance. It was an ambition for him, an obsession. Sometimes you’d think: “This guy is crazy!” But no, he wasn’t crazy. He knew what he wanted and when he got something into his head, he’d do whatever it took to achieve it. That’s the mentality you need.

We felt proud seeing him playing in the first team at such a young age and kind of representing us. We were all together every day — we were like brothers.

Watching him play against Manchester City or Borussia Dortmund, we all went crazy. It felt like, although he was the one who was playing, it was us. We felt like we were watching ourselves playing on TV.

Mbappe celebrates scoring against Manchester City at the age of 18 (Oli SCARFF / AFP via Getty Images)

I feel a lot of pride about having played with him. I often tease my friends about it. “I used to be this guy’s captain, you know?!”

When I watch him today, it’s as a spectator, but also as a former team-mate who’s proud to see his mate succeeding in the best possible way.

I hope that he can go on to achieve even bigger things and bring another World Cup back to France.

— As told to Tom Williams